


The Oddball of Heaven

by 1AbbyNewth5



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel/Demon Relationship, Archangel fucking Gabriel is a dick, Asexual Relationship, Aziraphale doesn't take compliments easily, Comforting Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley wants to help, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fat Shaming, Idiots in Love, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Insecure Aziraphale (Good Omens), M/M, Other, Past Heaven Abuse, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 23:27:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19859779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1AbbyNewth5/pseuds/1AbbyNewth5
Summary: In which Aziraphale has some pretty bad self-esteem issues, and he gets real antsy over a simple compliment from Crowley.And also in which that Aziraphale needs more angst fics.(pulled out from my "Ineffable Husbands Oneshot" chapter-work thing)





	The Oddball of Heaven

Aziraphale didn’t know it by how quiet he was, but Crowley wasn’t asleep. His eyes were open, staring up at the angel’s face as he was reading a small prophecy book. Crowley was smiling slightly.

“Heh,” he chuckles, breaking the angel’s concentration on the book. “Crowley dear, aren’t you supposed to be asleep by now? We both know you still have to work on that.”

“I know,” Crowley mumbles. “I just noticed your eyes.”

“My eyes? Why?”

Crowley adjusted himself on his elbow and hovered a finger near Aziraphale’s face. “One is a different color. One’s blue, one’s hazel… or is that green? Funny how I never noticed that before.”

The angel had a small smile forming on his face, blushing. “Funny how you were the _first_ to notice that in a long while. I thought you already knew!”

“Must have been my sunglasses,” Crowley replied. “Darkening my vision and mix-matching colors and such.”

Well, I mean… darkening your vision is how sunglasses work, so… was there anything to say to that? Probably not. So Aziraphale cleared his throat, and hummed in response. Crowley sensed some kind of discomfort all of the sudden. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Hmm?” Aziraphale looked back at the demon, looking like he was trying to distract himself with something that wasn’t his book. He shook his head, as soon as he noticed a mirror leaning on the wall across the bedroom. “N- No, you’re alright, Crowley. I was just thinking… about things.”

Crowley pouted, not getting the answer that he wanted. Aziraphale pursed his lips and sighed. “Alright, if I say what’s wrong, you won’t go all ‘I’ll kill that person for you’, will you?”

Crowley’s eyebrow lilted. “Depends on what that person did to you.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Aziraphale mumbled, fingers intertwining and fiddling. “I- Well… I kind of expected someone… ‘up there’ to notice my eyes so they’d… be rude about it. Calling me imperfect, defective, that kind of thing.”

“Why? I don’t think so,” Crowley said. “I think your eyes are neat to look at.”

Aziraphale tried to hide another smile, but couldn’t fight it. “Oh, of course _you_ would. But you’re not an angel… anymore…?”

Should ‘anymore’ be put in a sentence when Crowley hasn’t been an angel for over six thousand years? The two shrugged, and Aziraphale continued. “So, you get to be honest about how you think of me in a ni- _good_ way. But the angels up there, they… they’re not so nice as I always thought they’d be. Especially you-know-who.”

Crowley frowned, asking, “Should I say his name so we’d actually know who we’re talking about?”

“Starts with a G-”

“Okay, we both know who we’re talking about. The dick one. Sweet.”

Aziraphale chuckled. “You-know-who would always point out things to me of how I act and look, and in words that are very judgmental, and oppressive, and…”

His eyes trailed back over to the mirror across the room and remembered three words exactly; “ _Lose the gut._ ”

Aziraphale held his breath for a moment, trying to look at his hands while ignoring his stomach, which is securely wrapped around by Crowley’s arm. “...he’s just rude, and insults me, but… subtly, I suppose…? He uses his words in a very odd way, but you know what he means. I don’t get compliments a lot, so… hearing you saying that my eyes are… _neat…_ makes me a bit happy.”

“A _bit_ happy?” Crowley asked, grinning. The angel playfully tapped his hand. “You know what I mean. I get flattered easily. It feels very nice.”

Crowley smirked, pretending he didn’t hear ‘nice’ by replacing it with some other positive word about feeling good. “Everyone’s very passive aggressive up there, huh?”

“The more I realized it, yes,” Aziraphale tried to smile. “You should know, you’ve fallen from there.”

“Mmm,” Crowley shrugged. “I don’t remember a _whole_ lot when I was lounging around in Heaven. Just me making a bunch of stars, asking questions, angels being pissed at me for asking questions…”

Aziraphale mumbled something under his breath [1], making Crowley’s ear twitch. The angel looked like he was staring at the mirror again. Crowley sat himself up to see Aziraphale’s face. It just looked like his face was very blank, spacing out… something that Aziraphale does very very very _very_ rarely. The demon waved his hand in front of him, making him blink a few times. “Ah-! What-? Wh- Oh. Sorry, Crowley.”

“You alright?” Crowley asked, voice going soft. “You said something.”

Aziraphale bit his lip. “Oh- it’s- it’s nothing. No need to worry, love.”

“You’re a bad liar, angel,” Crowley frowned. “I’ve known you for six millennia, I know how your emotions work.”

“Gabriel told me to ‘lose my gut’,” Aziraphale sped his way through that sentence, fingers shaking. Crowley went quiet. “He _basically_ told me to stop eating and look more, I don’t know… _fit?_ He’s such a- He- Ugh.”

Aziraphale slapped his face with a hand, and Crowley leaned over hold it away. “Hey, hey, hey-”

“I’m sorry, Crowley,” the angel muttered. “You shouldn’t be hearing me say these things. You’d be angry all night.”

Crowley shook his head. “No, no, not angry. Just… _severely negative_ towards the people that don’t like you for no reason.”

“Oh, they have a reason alright,” Aziraphale replied, with an upset tone in his voice. It looked like he wasn’t even trying to force a smile anymore. “Many. They say I think too much, doomed to fail… a pathetic excuse.”

“Angel-” Crowley didn’t like the growing raspiness in Aziraphale’s voice at all.

“They _hate_ me up there.” Aziraphale gritted his teeth, looking up at his ceiling. “I always thought that how _I_ am was how angels should be, but… I’m not. Not at all.”

“Aziraphale, stop that,” Crowley was sitting on his knees, right next to Aziraphale. He was noticing small waterworks in his different colored eyes. “You _are_ how angels should be. It’s _them_ who are pathetic.”

Aziraphale turned his head to the demon, seconds after wiping his eyes. “What did they say to you when you were in my body, Crowley?”

Crowley blinked. His pupils dilated for a moment before shifting back to normal narrow slits. “What?”

“You barely said anything that was happening in Heaven while I told you _every_ thing about Hell and your trial,” Aziraphale said. “What happened up there?”

Crowley’s lips were parted, but it’s not like his jaw was hanging. The usual speechless pouted lip that Crowley has always had when he’s trying to think of something to say. He didn’t want to talk about his angel’s ~~execution~~ trial, but…

“ _Just shut your stupid mouth, and die already._ ”

When Aziraphale wants to know something, he _really_ wants to know it.

The demon cleared his throat, straightening his back. “Well… they didn’t send rude notes, that’s for sure. You remember the little paper of Agnes Nutter’s last prophecy? The ‘playing with fyre’ one?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale nodded. Crowley took a deep breath. “Yeah… guess what happened.”

Crowley watched Aziraphale’s meticulous little faces he’s made while trying to guess what has happened in Heaven. A few minutes of silence has passed. Crowley suddenly felt a sense of dread in the room. Aziraphale’s eyes widened, with his fingers trembling. Bigger tears started working up in his eyes, and his mouth was quivering. “N- No, they- they wouldn’t- they couldn’t…”

Crowley leaned over gently. “Angel?”

(Snap!)

Suddenly, with the blink of an eye, Aziraphale was gone from the bedroom. Crowley flinched back, hearing the front door of the bookshop slam shut with a jingle of the bell. “What the some place…?!”

Crowley miracled his pants, shoes, and blazer back on [2], and quickly went down the spiral stairs of the bookshop, to find that Aziraphale’s coat was gone from the hanger. He exited the bookshop (while miracling the doors locked) to see if Aziraphale was in the Bentley, but it was empty. Oh well. Crowley got himself inside the car to look for his angel anyway.

“ _Here we are, born to be kings,_

_We’re the princes of the universe._

_Here we belong, fighting to survive,_

_In a world with the darkest powers…_ [3]”

“It’s too late at night for him to be having comfort food at the Ritz…” Crowley mumbled as every restaurant he passed by was closed with the lights inside turned completely off. Very few people were out tonight, but obviously knowing Aziraphale and having such out of place bright clothes, he would be pretty easy to spot. A few long minutes pass, and Crowley hasn’t caught him walking around town. He was about to get a bit worried, until he remembered that St. James’s Park still exists.

Crowley parked his car as close to the park as possible and got out, immediately figuring out just where Aziraphale was. All it had to take a simple small walk across the pavement to find him.

The two have never been to St. James’s Park at night, but it looks and feels _much_ more peaceful than it does during the daytime. That was not important to acknowledge, but I thought it’d be nice to set the mood anyway.

After skipping along some pebbles, Crowley finally spotted a bench with a huge feathery white figure sitting on it.

 _Yep, that’s him._ Crowley took a deep breath through his nose and sighed, until he heard muffled sobbing from the figure. Crowley groaned, but in a heart broken sense. As he got closer to the bench, it was obviously Aziraphale, wrapping himself with his wings to cry without being seen. The weeping from the angel wearily stopped, once Crowley touched the armrest with the tips of his fingers. Aziraphale’s right wing slowly moved away from his face, along with both of his hands that were vigorously rubbing his eyes. The two caught each others’ faces, and Crowley waved with his fingers. Aziraphale’s wing flinched back to the same place where it was hiding him. For body language with wings, this is “Leave me alone, please.” But of course, Aziraphale didn’t any anything, other than a few subconscious little whimpers.

Crowley quietly sat himself down next to the angel anyway, patient if it’s going to take a while for Aziraphale to talk. The demon didn’t sprawl himself all over the bench like how he usually does. He’s keeping a respectable distance, and is actually _sitting_ for once. A faint sentence caught Crowley’s ear after a moment. He looked down at Aziraphale, hoping he’d repeat what he just said. He tried to keep his voice as soft and gentle as possible, trying not to sound invasive in the slightest. “What was that, love?”

A long sigh that turned into a sob came from Aziraphale, and his wing shifted away from his face again.

“Am I really _that_ awful…??”

Crowley swore that he could literally feel his heart break, both at the question, and by looking at how sad and scared Aziraphale was. The angel shakily sat himself up with his wings having no sense of bench control, so they vanished by themselves. Crowley held his breath through his nose, wanting to prepare himself to handle whatever it is that Aziraphale might say to belittle himself, even though none of the belittlement is true in Crowley’s eyes.

“Am I really _that_ much of a useless, _fat little annoyance_ to everybody up in Heaven that they just wanted to _KILL me??_ ”

Crowley tried to reach out his hand to comfort Aziraphale, but he was shaking and moving his hands so much as he spoke that he just couldn’t keep himself still. He stood up from the bench. “Did Gabriel hate me _THAT much?!_ Did he want to watch my body get _DESTROYED?!_ ”

Crowley swallowed a lump in his throat, knowing that Aziraphale wants an answer. “Unfortunately.”

More tears were welling up in Aziraphale’s heterochromia eyes, reminding Crowley that this whole thing has happened all because he _complimented them…_ As Aziraphale said though, he’s not used to such simple compliments as calling different colored eyes ‘neat’, so you can’t really blame him for being like this.

Aziraphale’s whole body is trembling at this point, as if he’s going to discorporate himself out of such hate of ‘up there’. He never knew he _could_ hate.

“Of course,” his voice was breaking, forcing himself to grin. “Of- fucking- _course_ he’d want to see that…!”

Crowley, _completely_ ignoring the fact that the most innocent thing he met in the world (besides children) just swore in front of him, made his own wings stretch out from his back. Aziraphale was temporarily still and quiet enough for Crowley to stand up from the bench and pull him in his arms. “Come here, angel.”

“I’m _not_ an angel!” Aziraphale shouted, not even phasing Crowley’s attempt to wrap his wings around them both. “I’m _pathetic!_ A tool! A disgrace! Useless! Defective! I’m _NOT_ AN ANGEL! I’m _not-!_ I’m not…!”

“Shhh, shh, shh…” Just by hearing small shushes and feeling Crowley’s hands gently rub all over his back ( _and_ having better groomed demon wings wrapped around him), Aziraphale had his eyes open wide with a waterfall of tears pouring out of them, and he eventually stops his screaming of self-loathing. His throat felt very hoarse, and thankfully, he didn’t feel any sense of a breakdown coming [4]. Crowley spoke, “No more crying, Aziraphale. You’re alright. Let’s go.”

“I-”

“Shh,” Crowley held onto Aziraphale’s hand, making both of them walk through the park to the Bentley.

The two were completely silent, other than a few sniffles from Aziraphale, and low grumbles while trying to wipe his eyes with his sleeve. Crowley wrapped a wing around Aziraphale’s shoulder, carefully pulling him close. Aziraphale didn’t notice, as he was staring at nothing at this point.

They both eventually got to the car, and Crowley watched Aziraphale cautiously get himself inside on the passenger seat. The demon’s wings disappeared as soon as he got in. They were silent on the way back to the bookshop as well, and as Crowley parked right outside the front door, he saw Aziraphale sleeping.

“Huh,” Crowley mumbled. “That’s rare.”

With the light of the sun hitting his face, Aziraphale’s eyes opened, and flinched, looking around that he’s still in Crowley’s car. The demon was nowhere to be seen, except for in the bookshop. Aziraphale unbuckled his seatbelt and was about to get out of the Bentley to go have a talk with him, but a bright yellow paper on the dashboard caught his eye. He slowly shut the passenger door closed, and lifted the paper to see if there was anything on it. Apparently, both sides are written down as follows;

“(Wow, it’s been a while since I wrote a letter like this to you, huh? Feel very old all of the sudden. But that’s not important right now. Anyway… let’s get this over with.)

Aziraphale -

I guess I could say I’ve learned more about you last night than the whole time we’ve been on Earth together. You never really got that in depth with telling me how you felt about Heaven and Gabriel and everybody else up there. I must have said something wrong to make you feel what you’ve felt last night, and I kinda regret it now, so I’m  really sorry for that. But I’m glad you told me, because if I ever see Gabriel or any other angel around, I’m gonna pummel them for you. Send them straight to Hell!

I don’t know if that bit was funny, it probably wasn’t.

Yeah, you may be different from all the other angels up there, but I’m different from all the demons down in Hell, so you’re not the only celestial thing that feels out of place.

Here is a thing I just realized; Gabriel might have hated you because you’re different. ‘Oh, you think and eat too much, you’re gonna fail even though you’re doing a great job, your hands move a lot when you talk and it’s annoying, you need the exercise, I’m better than you because I’m the second-in-command,’ all that junk. But I think he hates you for an actual reason. He’s scared of you now. All because of our swap, Heaven and Hell are afraid of you and me, and what we can do together. We never really belonged in those places, and I think that’s a good thing. That’s why we’re on our own side against the two of them now.

You don’t belong in Heaven anymore, so why should you care about what the other angels think of you now? They’re all a bunch of passive aggressive/passive oppressive (?) cowards who have no idea what I see in you. You are better than all of those angels combined. You know what humans think of angels? They think angels are protective, kind, and loyal. But I can find more and better words, and I’m gonna prove it.

You are the most kind, humble, selfless, thoughtful, silly, loyal, protective, rebellious, and the most bravest angel that I’ve ever met. You are exactly how humans perceive and portray angels, but yet, you are the oddball of Heaven. Irony. Just know that all those words that I listed out are how I perceive you. You are the angel that the whole world needs more of, and I’m lucky that you’re the only thing I need in the world anyway.

Wow, I wrote on two sides of this whole paper. This got long! Anyway, once you wake up and read this, come in the bookshop and I’ll hug you. We don’t have to talk or anything, we can just hug for a bit. Afterwards, we can do that picnic you told me about back in the 60’s if you’d like.

With six thousand years of love,

\- Crowley”

Getting tears in his eyes and smiling from ear to ear, Aziraphale got out of the Bentley, and hugged Crowley tight for an hour.

**Author's Note:**

> (insert Weeping Angels joke here)
> 
> Here are the little footnotes that I've never done before;  
> [1] What Aziraphale mumbled was "Not being good enough for an angel..."
> 
> [2] Crowley didn't bother miracling his sunglasses on, so his eyes are bare throughout this whole thing.
> 
> [3] Song is 'Princes of the Universe' by Queen (because of course it is)
> 
> [4] Crowley miracled Aziraphale to stop crying because he HATES seeing him this upset, and so should you


End file.
